The leaf area index (LAI) is defined as the one-sided leaf area per unit ground area and is probably the most widely used index to characterize grapevine vigour. However, direct LAI measurement requires the use of destructive leaves sampling methods which are costly and time-consuming and so are other indirect methods. Faced with these techniques, vineyard leaf area can be indirectly estimated using ground-based LIDAR sensors that scan the vines and get information about the geometry and/or structure of the canopy. In addition, LAI is spatially variable. In order to obtain a map of LAI spatial distribution, a SICK LMS-200 laser scanner together with an RTK DGPS and an inertial sensor has been used to scan a vineyard plot. Specifically, the laser system was tested on a Syrah vineyard in Raimat (Catalonia, Spain), with rows of 380 m length and 3 m row spacing. The total scanned ground area was 0.70 ha. Having turned the resulting point vector map into a raster map by local block kriging, two classified maps with different LAI zones (two and three zones) were obtained using cluster analysis. Finally, to establish a protocol for the LIDAR use, the original maps were compared with maps obtained by progressively reducing the sample size. Concordance analysis between these maps showed that the LIDAR system could be used intermittently if the distance between scans along the row were separated not more than 15 m, and the scanned length was 1 m when the LIDAR system is running. The resulting map could be used for many purposes such as to optimize the applied doses of pesticides.